December 6th, 2006 | 
Author: Congratulations are in order to those in New York City. Thanks to the noble effort of the government, you are now required to be more healthy! Hooray!
Michael J. Nelson outlines some other things that should be banned in order to protect the rock stupid public who can’t take care of themselves.
Here’s some other things that I think should be banned for the health and safety of the general public:
- Overhead metal cabinets. I saw a guy get sliced pretty good by one of these. They should totally be banned. They make soft plastic ones now you know!
- Toasters. What if they fall into your bathtub?
- The NFL will now be touch only. No tackles! Some of those guys actually get career ending injuries.
- Pools. A bunch of lung filling water all gathered in one place is a terribly unsafe idea.
What else should be banned in the interest of public health and safety?
Tags: politics
Seriously the smoking ban “for your health” was only the beginning, here comes Fat! Whats next Sodium? Cholesterol? Sugar?
The slippery slope argument is always pretty weak.
But I think that there is a definite precident set here saying that the government knows what’s best for you, the government should make decisions that you aren’t capable of making, and that we should rely on the government to protect us from ourselves. Balderdash!
“Overhead metal cabinets. I saw a guy get sliced pretty good by one of these. They should totally be banned. They make soft plastic ones now you know!”
What an idiot!
I believe that the intent of at least some of these bans is economic — people who smoke are sick more, hence cost various entities (including, I suppose, society at large) more.
You could look at it as the government going down the list of top 10 things that kill you, determining (theoretically) what the causes are of each of those 10 things, and stepping in to get people to change what is obviously behavior they’re not going to change on their own (esp if they’re actively encouraged not to, which was thrust of the anti-tobacco suit). Ditto seat belts and safety glass and OSHA standards and coal mine safety and a bunch of other things like that that for the most part people don’t argue about (much) any more.
Anyway, that’s one theory.
Well, of course. That’s the well-intentioned argument that gets these laws passed: seatbelts, smoking, trans fat, etc.
There’s a great quote from Walter E. Williams, noted economist (see: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2006/05/24/click_it_or_ticket)
“…’Lack of safety belt use is a growing public health issue that . . . also costs us all billions of dollars every year,’ that’s not a problem of liberty. It’s a problem of socialism. No human should be coerced by the state to bear the medical expense, or any other expense, for his fellow man. In other words, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another is morally offensive.”
It’s my experience that economists are usually very much against these laws, from the late Milton Friedman right down to econ professors. Many of these laws may even cause what economists refer to as a “dead weight loss” to society.
So while the intent may seem economic, it’s really political, particularly socialistic in nature.
You say “socialistic” like that’s a bad thing?
I suppose a question to ask is which safety or health laws we should repeal? Auto-safety features, making all safety features on cars entirely optional? Mining/OSHA safety rules? FDA approval before pharmaceuticals can be sold? Food inspection regulations?
I think (?) that the logic of “government shouldn’t meddle here” means that all of these should be abolished. Or if not, what am I missing? Something, I imagine.
In any event, one could also say that it’s an inherent societal good for a population to be healthy, and in fact so good that the government should make some effort to bring this about. Surely no one benefits from, say, a workforce with an average lifespan of less than 60 years, say, or a workforce with (making this up) an average of 6 week’s loss of productivity due to illness or injury.
You are assuming here that government and only govenment is capable of bringing about such results.
It’s my view that government should do only the things that private enterprise is incapable of doing. There are obvious examples like military, police, interstate commerce, etc (there’s an economic term for this things I can’t recall) where private enterprise & competition would simply not work.
Seatbelt laws force car companies to install them and drivers to use them, but does that mean that seatbelts wouldn’t become standard without government interference? Or if we dismantled those laws that seatbelts would disappear the next day? There’s no law requiring that FM radios be installed in cars, and yet, magically they are–because there is a demand for it. There’s no law requiring the convenient location of a grocery store or a gas station, but somehow they manage to spring up in just the right places. Personally, I trust the market, people with specific knowledge who are best suited to make decisions–suppliers and consumers–to decide what’s best for them and would only insist on government intervention as a last resort. I do not advocate ignoring a problem, or saying “that’s somebody else’s problem”, I simply advocate that there are many solutions to a problem, the best of which often do not involve government.
Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Let consumers decide, with their dollars, what will be served to them, not the government. If I don’t want a big dish of trans fatty food, then I will not purchase it. If I want to drive without a seatbelt and eat pure lard all day, why is it any of your business? The same could be said about my eventual hospital bill. If I shoved nothing but fat into myself, the doctor’s bill should also be none of your business.
Practically speaking, I’m not actively suggesting we waste effort repealing required installation of seatbelts into cars at this point, but I *do* think police resources could be better allocated than on making sure I have my seatbelt fastened properly (which I always do).